Scot on the Rocks

plopping myself down on the couch.

“Quiet day,” she said. “What are you going to do about your stuff?”

“Stuff?” I asked, flipping the television on.

“Your stuff, your things,” she said. “As in, what are you going to wear to work tomorrow?”

“My stuff,” I said. Right.

“You can borrow mine until you get back downtown to pick up yours,” she said. That would have been a great idea if I could actually fit into any of Vanessa’s things.

Vanessa was right. I should pick myself up, dust myself off, and go down to Douglas’s apartment and collect my things. That would be the mature, responsible thing to do. I should just go down there, pack my bags, and go about moving on with the rest of my life.

Two hours later, I’d hit the makeup counters at Saks, bought a new pair of black pumps and was headed up to the fifth floor to get some new outfits when my cell phone rang. I could see Jack’s work number pop up on my caller ID and I answered it.

“How’s it going?” Jack said.

“Fine,” I said, hoping he couldn’t hear the music playing on the fifth floor of Saks. It was kind of loud.

“Did you win?” Jack asked.

“Win what?”

“Vanessa said you had a hearing on one of your pro bono cases?” Jack said.

“Oh, yes,” I said, “that. Of course I won. It went great. Great! Great, great, great…”

“Excuse me, miss,” a salesperson asked, “would you like me to start a fitting room for you?” I smiled and nodded, and quietly handed her the clothing I was holding.

“Brooke, are you shopping?” Jack asked.

“Well, you can’t expect me to sit at home eating raw cookie dough all day,” I said. “Saks can be very therapeutic.”

“No,” Jack said, “I expect you to come to work. Where you belong.” Clearly, I was talking to a man. A woman would understand that I belonged at Saks.

“Douglas and I are having some problems,” I said, brushing my hand against a row of spring dresses. “So, I just need a day to get back to myself.”

“Vanessa said he kicked you out of the apartment,” Jack said.

“Well, yeah,” I said, “that’s sort of, like, the problem.”

“What are you doing in Saks?” he said. “Come to the office and I’ll take you out for lunch.”

“I don’t want lunch, I just want Douglas,” I said. I hoped he understood that I was saying that I wanted Douglas back, for things to be the way they used to be, and not that I was actually suggesting that I wanted to eat Douglas for lunch. Although I was not opposed to the occasional afternoon rendezvous….

“Well, it’s over, so why don’t you let me take you for lunch,” he said.

“Can you even pretend to be supportive?” I asked.

“You want me to support your going to Saks?” he asked.

“I don’t have any clothes or makeup,” I said. “I didn’t get a chance to pack anything on my way out.”

Jack didn’t respond. I could tell that he was brushing his hand through his hair as he thought.

“Well, then,” he said, clearing his throat as he did, “I’ll pick you up at Saks right now and take you to the apartment to pack a bag. It’s the middle of the day so he won’t be home.” I could tell that he was deliberately refraining from saying Douglas’s name, sort of the way Harry Potter only calls Voldemort “he who shall not be named.”

“Thanks, Jack,” I said, “but I’m fine.”

An hour and a half later, I walked out of Saks with three enormous shopping bags, two garment bags and a tiny shopping bag that held all of my cosmetics. It was amazing that you could spend that much money at the cosmetics counter and the sum total of your purchases could fit into a tiny bag that would barely hold a pair of shoes.

As I pushed open the door to the Fifth Avenue exit, there stood Vanessa in front of a town car holding a sign that said “Brooke Miller.”

“What on earth are you doing here?” I said, my eyes almost brimming up with tears at the sight of her.

“Jack said that you were here, so I thought I’d take you downtown to get your stuff.” She grabbed a shopping bag and garment bag from me and signaled for the driver to pop open the trunk. “We’ll do it quick and painless, like ripping off a Band-Aid.”

“Thank you,” I said, a tear escaping from my eye.

“Breakups suck,” she said, putting her arm around me.

As the car sailed down Fifth Avenue, Vanessa and I sorted through my shopping bags, deciding which items I would have to return and which she would be borrowing.

We arrived in front of the Soho Triumphe and Vanessa got out of the car with me. I told her that I thought I should do this part alone.

“Hi,” I said to the doorman as he stopped me on the way in, “I’m Brooke Miller, I live in 32G. Well, lived,” I said, unsure of my new status. I finally settled on saying: “I’m in 32G.”

I got up to the apartment and opened the door. Even though it had only been mere hours since I’d left, it already felt as if I didn’t recognize the place. Everything somehow looked colder, more antiseptic, and I didn’t see a trace of myself in it. I walked over to the windowsill and saw a picture of Douglas and me, taken when we were down in the islands for Christmas the previous year, nestled among the other objets d’art he had lined up on the sill like little soldiers.

It’s not over, I thought. If it were over, that would have been the first thing I’d have thrown out. My first step in moving on. (I probably would have hurled it right out the window, but let’s not get technical.)

Walking into the bedroom, I took a deep breath. It smelled just like Douglas. Woodsy and manly and dark. The bed was unmade and I smiled, thinking about how Douglas and I never had the time to make it during the week. I picked up his pillow and inhaled.

Then, remembering Vanessa waiting downstairs in a car for me, I quickly took out the step stool and grabbed a suitcase from the top shelf of the closet. I didn’t need too many things. I would be back.

I went through the closet and heard a key in the door. A smile crept onto my lips. That unmade bed was about to come in very handy….

If lipped the suitcase shut and headed toward the bedroom door as I heard a voice on a cell phone. A woman’s voice.

“I’m at your apartment, baby,” she said as I stood frozen in my tracks. I couldn’t believe that Beryl had the nerve to be there. The day after Douglas threw me out. A thousand thoughts flooded my brain — should I hide in the closet? Under the bed? What should I do? Even if I hid myself, the suitcase was still there in plain sight. With all of my things in it. And anyway, who was I — Lucy Ricardo?

There was nowhere to go. It was just like that scene in No Way Out where Kevin Costner’s photo is coming up on the computer screen and he’s about to be revealed as the bad guy, but really, he’s not the real bad guy, someone else is the real bad guy, but he’s totally stuck inside the Pentagon with nowhere to go.

“Pastis?” I heard Beryl say. “I’d absolutely love to!”

The room began to spin. He was taking Beryl to Pastis, a fabulous ultra-trendy French bistro downtown in the Meatpacking District. A favorite of local celebs and the New York Euro scene, Douglas used to call it “our place” since we had spent so much time there over the years.

I sat down on the unmade bed and laughed at myself. I couldn’t believe that up until a few weeks ago, I used to indulge this pathetic little fantasy that Douglas would propose to me there. Actually drop down to his knees in the middle of the restaurant and proclaim his undying love to me in front of his friends and our waiter and the other diners and any celebrities who happened to be there that night. I would giggle like a schoolgirl and jump down to the ground to throw my arms around him, all the while kissing him and screaming, “Yes, yes, yes! I will marry you!” Of course, the crowd would applaud and the waiter would bring a bottle of champagne to our table. We would laugh and drink champagne and I would blind the other diners with the sheer size and brilliance of my